Log 2016010801

Yesterday, I hiked 7.2 miles from Scioto Trail Section - Buckeye (BT)/ North Country/ American Discovery Trail, Points 20 - 15. I estimate that I have about 185 miles left on the BT circuit.

Right now, my 2008 Chevy HHR LS has a blown driver's side headlight.  In order to get to it, I have to cocktail the tires all the way to the right, then pull the fenders undersheilding partly off to insert my hand inside of the primary hull to twist and dismount it. It's not really my favorite thing to do.

And I'll have to replace the windshield wiper mechanism bars that go under the crawl.  I have them now.  I got them from Classic Chevrolet in Mentor of Lake County. And I was surprised they were in stock.

Log 2015112001

I'm staying overnight in Chillicothe of Ross County tonight.  I hiked Points 20 - 22 of the Scioto Trail Section - Buckeye/ North Country/ American Discovery Trail (02/2012 map & guide) in the Scioto Trail State Forest.  And I checked the Buckeye Trail Association's website for any trail alerts, or map updates and there wasn't anything that was pertaining to this area.  But when I got a little bit past Pt. 22 in the clockwise direction, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources - Division of Forestry had closed a portion of the BT/ NCT/ ADT.  When I got back to my motel, I opened the webpage for the forest and it states that they're closing it for logging and that there were maps posted on sight.

I converted the state forest map to a image file and hosted it on my Facebook profile set to public for the purpose of using it as an image overlay in my Google Earth application.  And I did this because I saw that this map was drawn to scale.  After adjusting it's proportions, I found that it's roads and the route of the BT/NCT/ADT conformed well.

After noting its consistancy with the Scioto Trail Section track and getting the forestry map's proportions right, I used a "path" measure in Google Earth to measure the distance from the shortest point from the section to the nearest portion of the unincorporated community of Massieville in Ross County.  Because it comes in at 3.68 miles, it is 0.68 miles too long at the thru hike rate for the Chillicothe Transit Service's (CTS) dial-a-ride program to be considered in the Ohio Transit Hiker's Resource (OTHR) at this time.

However, Massieville is unincorporated (it doesn't have any municipal lines), so the area might be vague.  To be continued... But I know for sure that the most direct route from the BT/NCT/ADT in the forest to Massieville is too far.  There may still be another option.  In the meantime, I don't need to hike those state forest bridle trails since I already know that they won't work.

Log 2015110702

Scioto Trail Section's original BTA GIS/ GPS Depository tracks are not merging.  So far, I've got every track touching each other, they're all in order and I've noted the direction that they're going in.  My guess is that I'm going to have to trace over every off-road segment.  As far as I can tell, the original track segments are healthy.  But sometimes in mapping, things just don't make sense no matter how hard that I try.